McCain's Debate Cancellation, Obama's Response

When Senator McCain says he's going to skip the first presidential debate, he implies that debates are "just politics." Debates are political events, to be sure, but they are more than that: they are an important part of the democratic process. They are something like a formal job interview for the position to which the candidates aspire. To skip one for any reason aside from serious personal injury or illness is irresponsible. You don't skip the interview and then expect to be accorded the job. My point is that Senator McCain's gesture shows a certain contempt for the democratic process and for the voters. I'm not impressed by his decision, and I find it to be crassly opportunistic and perhaps even desperate. It isn't that McCain can't hold his own during a debate. He has done so many times. Rather, and in accordance with the best analysis I've seen so far, I believe he's upset that the first debate is on foreign policy at a time when few people are thinking about foreign policy. He might do very well and yet find that his performance does him little good because the timing is off and the subject doesn't suit the country's current preoccupation. That's frustrating, of course, but it is not a reason to reschedule the debate.

I've listened to some of what Barack Obama has said about the economic crisis and McCain's latest announcement on the debate, and I am only moderately impressed. It seems to me that his remarks lack punch. He doesn't need to accuse McCain of being cynical and opportunistic (though that would be accurate), but just saying that "we need to hear from the candidates now more than ever" is weak. Say it: debates are not mere campaigning or "just politics"; you owe these debates to the people, and skipping out on them betrays your contempt for the people and the process. Trying to shift the v.p. debate is even more inexcusable because there's just no way to take it other than to suppose that Sarah Palin isn't ready to do her part. What a great relief it would be to the McCain campaign if they could simply cancel the Palin-Biden debate! And that is why they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

Finally, I tire of hearing politicians use the word "politics" in the most dismissive, cynical way, as if the word were a synonym for "dirty tricks, lies, and posturing." It is as if educators were to go around trashing the very concept of learning, or doctors mocked the art of diagnosing and treating patients. What would we think of them if they did that? Obama does this just as much as McCain, and when Obama does it, he plays right into the hands of Republican strategists' anti-government rhetoric. There's nothing inherently wrong with "politics" or, for that matter, "partisanship." The notion that we are all going to agree on everything and "put politics aside" is childish; when our beliefs differ markedly, we hash them out in the political arena. That's the way things should be; it isn't an aberration. To suggest otherwise is to condemn and deride people for believing anything at all, and it is to imply that one-party rule is better than the democratic process. Aristotle's Politics ought to be required reading for modern-day candidates: if you don't believe that the political process is one of the main ways people promote the good life, you have no business entering the field in the first place.